Robert Barron - Peace in the Storm
Peace be with you. Friends, during this B-cycle of the liturgical readings, we're reading from the Gospel of Mark, and there's something about Mark that's just, I don't know, kind of bracing. It's the first of the Gospels. It's written in this very kind of simple, brisk manner. He wasn't a native Greek speaker. You can tell that just from the way he writes. But it gives the writing a kind of Hemingway-esque quality. And you'll see just in his narrative strategy, there's always something, as I say, bracing about him. Well, the story for today is one that the first Christians obviously loved because it surfaces in different forms in all four Gospels. The story of the stilling of the sea.
Now, what I'm going to do is give you three separate interpretations, all of which have come up out of the ancient Church, and they all shed light on the spiritual life. So we know the basic story of Jesus in the boat with the disciples. The storm kicks up. Jesus is asleep in the stern of the boat. The disciples are panicking. They wake him up. Once he's awakened, he calms the storm and then he says, you have little faith. So there's the basic structure of the story. So let me give you just a couple, as I say, three interpretations of this. Whenever we're talking about Jesus and the disciples in a boat, we're talking about the Church, the bark of Peter. And it's the Church making its way through space and time.
So think of this now, it's not just something that happened long ago, it clearly did because how vividly remembered this is, but the Church applies it now to us and to our spiritual lives. It's the Church making its way through space and time. What kick-up, listen to me, inevitably storms, and we all know that, anyone that's lived more than eight years or so on planet Earth knows that in life you confront storms. Opposition, difficulty, criticism, failure, fear, whatever it is. And so the Church read even the most cursory account of Church history. What will you see? Squalls and storms that rise up and threaten the bark of Peter.
The disciples afraid? Well, understandably, I've said many times, ancient Israel was afraid of the water. They didn't have really good boats to navigate it. Certainly the open sea was a symbol of chaos. Well, here, the Sea of Galilee, which is relatively small, but it becomes like the open sea. Because the squall comes up and they say, by the way, that this happens on the sea of Galilee, just given the weather patterns and so on and the way it's configured, and these storms can be extremely violent. Stormy water. We go right back to page one of the Book of Genesis, the tohu wabohu, the primal watery chaos. It always stands for what's opposed to God's intentions. And so here we are, the Church making its way through space and time, confronting storms. Disciples panicking. In the back of the boat is Jesus, sound asleep.
Think, Okay, what is going on here? First of all, how could the man be sound asleep in the back of a little boat while this storm is going on? Here's one interpretation now. The sleeping Christ stands for, listen, that place of safety and peace, Christ living in us, as Paul would put it, that gives us tranquility even in the midst of the worst storms. They're panicking, but Christ is asleep, serenely asleep. There's a place in you, in me, at the center of the soul, if you want, the place where I am here and now being created by God, that interior castle, to use the language of Teresa of Avila, the inner wine cellar, to use the language of St. John of the cross, this place of serenity and peace where I am connected to the infinite and eternal power of God.
The saints are those not who never confront problems. I mean every single saint that I've ever read about, they confronted squalls, but they all had in them this place of calm and safety and peace, that allowed them, see, once he's roused, he calms the storm. So it goes in our spiritual lives. If we can access that place, and it happens everybody, through prayer, it happens through meditation. I've known people like this in my life. Saintly people, who even when they're in the midst of terrible frustration and opposition and fear, nevertheless have this inner serenity. That's one way to read the sleeping Christ, and see he becomes the place where the storms are calmed. It doesn't mean necessarily they go away, it means I can endure and find peace even in the midst of a storm.
Okay, that's interpretation number one. Here's a second one that also comes up out of the Church fathers. In a way it's the opposite, but so it often goes in the spiritual life that polar opposites are more like creative tensions. So here's another way to look at it. Disciples in the boat with Jesus, that's the Church, make his way through the stormy waters of space and time. Okay, same thing. Why are they so afraid? Well, on this reading, the second reading, it's because they've allowed the Christ in them to fall asleep. So we're kind of looking at us from another angle, another way of interpreting it. They've allowed the spiritual power in them to go to sleep. No longer attentive, no longer spiritually alert.
If you want everybody, this is the danger in our sort of contemporary secularism. Okay, we're making our way through, yes, it's a difficult stormy world. And what have we done? We've forgotten about prayer. We've forgotten about the mass. We've forgotten about the saints. We've forgotten about the sacraments. And then we wonder, "okay, why am I so afraid? Why is my life so chaotic"? Well, look, it's because you allowed the Christ in you to fall asleep. So on this reading, wake him up. In other words, everybody, recover the spiritual life in all of its richness.
You know, I've heard this over the years of doing spiritual counseling and so on. "Father, I don't know, my life is just kind of a wreck. It's a mess. I'm afraid all the time. I have anxiety and depression. My life's kind of going nowhere". "Okay, well, are you going to mass"? "No, I haven't been to mass in 25 years". "Do you pray every day"? "Not really. I haven't prayed in ages". "How about the rosary"? "Yeah, when I was a kid, I prayed that, but I don't even have one anymore". "Do you read any spiritual books"? "No. I just do what is kind of practically in front of me to do".
And you're wondering why you're experiencing depression, anxiety, uselessness. You wonder why you're caught up in the storms of life and have no place to turn. You've allowed the Christ in you to fall asleep. So notice now on this interpretation of the story, when they wake him up, immediately he calms the storm. Okay, so it goes in the spiritual order. When we get reconnected to Christ, when we rouse the inner Christ to attention, the storms calm. So in the first reading, he represents that place of serenity and peace. On the other side, we could read that sleeping is a problem that we have, and we need to rouse and wake up the Christ within. Okay? Here's the third reading.
This one is kind of less moralistic, it's more mystical, I would say. The stormy waters, as I say, the tohu wabohu It's everything that scares us. It's everything that stands opposed to God. It's the power of death. Where does Jesus go when he comes into our human condition? He goes all the way down. So here on this reading, Jesus in the stormy waters, he doesn't pontificate to us from on high, but rather in the incarnation, he comes all the way down to join us. Yes, he's with us in the tohu wabohu of sin and alienation and loneliness, and yes, death itself.
See, think here, Jesus asleep in the stern of the boat. It's as though he's gone under the water. It's as though he's allowed the tohu wabohu to overwhelm him. And that's exactly, everybody, what happens on the cross, is Jesus takes on, look, all the storms of human dysfunction, but he takes on to this awful fear of death and then death itself. He allows himself, he permits himself to be overwhelmed. Can you see on this mystical reading, Christ asleep in the stern of the boat, well, that's the dead Christ asleep in the depths of the earth. That's Christ after his death on the cross.
And so what is Christ, arising, "awake, o, sleeper, awake". This is Christ now risen from the dead, having gone as it were under the waves, allowing the waves to sweep over him, now rises from the dead and commands the waves, commands the seas and calms them. See, what does the resurrection represent, but God's victory over the tohu wabohu. Yes, it exists for all kinds of reasons. We're responsible for it to some degree, and I get it, the tohu wabohu exists. But our God has come all the way down, allowing himself even to be overwhelmed by it. But then rising from the tohu wabohu, he now, now, go right back to Genesis. Remember it says, "the spirit of the Lord hovered over the surface of the waters".
Well, here's Jesus risen from the dead, hovering over the surface of the tohu wabohu. Victory. It's Christ the victor. Okay, so I've offered three interpretations of this great story, and that's part of the wisdom of the Church, is that it's drawn all these different insights from this great sort of iconic representation of the Christian life. The first one, find that place of peace in you, where Christ, even in the storm is asleep. Second one, if you've allowed Christ to fall asleep, well wake him up. Get reconnected to the spiritual life. Then finally, and most importantly, find comfort and joy and vindication in the Christ who's gone all the way down, but then rises up to become the commander of the waves. He's the Lord over sin and death. And find your peace in him. And God bless you.